DISCOURSE XIII. 283 `If the souls of men are immortal, such will their passions be, their desires, their fears and their sorrows. Now their na- tural desires of happiness, as 1 have said, will be intense and strong, when God, the spring of all happiness, who hath been renounced and abandoned by them, hath now for over forsaken them, and separated himself from them. What can there re- main for them but everlasting darkness and despair, without a dawn of hope through all the ages of eternity ? Their guilty con- sciences, with the views of God's unchangeable holiness, will for ever fill them with new fears and terrors, what shall be the next punishment they are to suffer. Such is the state of devils at this time, who 'expect a more dreadful punishment at the great day, as several places of scripture make evident. Their being immersed in the guilt of sin, and under the constant and tyran- nical dominion of it, will overwhelm them with present grief with cutting sorrows and horror unspeakable, which will sink into the centre of their souls, and make them an eternal terror and plague to themselves. Again, let us consider their immortality of soul will be spent in thinking : And what comfortable or hopeful object is there in heaven, earth, ur hell, on which they can fix or employ their thoughts for one moment, to give a short release from their ex- treme misery ? So that they are left in endless successions of most painful thoughts and passions from the very nature of things. Again, suppose this body of mine were by nature immortal, 'and was designed by my Creator in its constitution to live for ever ; and suppose by my Own folly and madness, my own wil- ful indulgence of appetite and passion, I had brought some dreadful distemper into my flesh which was found to be incurable, whether it be the gout or the stone, or some more terrible malady .of'the nervous kind, must not this gout, by necessity of nature, become an immortal gout I Must not these .distempers be immor- tal distempers, and create eternal pain ? And is the God of na- ture bound to work a miracle to cure and heal these diseases which I have wilfully brought upon myself by my own iniquities, and that after many warnings I Is it unrighteous in God to let me languish on amidst my agonies and groans as long as my nature continues in being, that is, to immortality i And especi- ally when there are valuable ends in divine providence, and God's government of the world to be subserved, by suffering stick wilful, rebellious, and impenitent creatures to becomesacri- ,fices to their own iniquity and his justice, and perpetual monu- ments to other worlds of their own madness and his holiness. Such is the case of a sinful spirit, and therefore a,God of justice may pronounce upon it, and execute the eternal misery.
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